The cartoon riots were a trick, perpetrated by unscrupulous imams and their backers, for the purpose of intimidating the West into adapting Islamist codes of speech policing, and for the purpose of generating fear and loathing of the West up and down that fabled Islamic street. It all worked quite well, thanks in no small part to the Western media’s cowardly behavior throughout.

Now, to the incriminating doc concerning Syria. At the time of the riots, it was fairly obvious that various and sundry despots around the Middle East were using the Danish cartoon controversy for their own ends. Syria’s hands were bloody, as they tend to be in any crisis.
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Here’s where the real taqiyya comes into play:

(C) xxxxxxx assessed that the SARG allowed the rioting to continue for an extended period and then, when it felt that “the message had been delivered,” it reacted with serious threats of force to stop it. He described the message to the U.S. and the broader international community as follows: “This is what you will have if we allow true democracy and allow Islamists to rule.” To the Islamic street all over the region, the message was that the SARG is protecting the dignity of Islam, and that the SARG is allowing Muslims freedom on the streets of Damascus they are not allowed on the streets of Cairo, Amman, or Tunis.

Notice the dual messages. To the West, the riots were orchestrated and intended to send the West a message: Leave us despots alone or you’ll get nothing but chaos. The Syrian Ba’ath Party had every incentive to send that particular message to a United States that had just toppled the neighboring Ba’ath dictatorship in Iraq. Assad didn’t want to end up like Saddam. To those who embodied the chaos, the rioters themselves, Assad sent a different message: We, the secular Syrian government, are your guardians from those nasties in the West. Trust us to keep Islam pure.

Go read the rest of the article, while bearing in mind that the cartoonists are living in hiding.